Campaign Trail

A history day?

• Gavin Hewitt
• 5 Nov 08, 11:54 PM GMT

Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois: The armies of the Chicago night were young, casual, diverse. Cool with sleeping out. There was the feel of a rock concert line. They enjoyed the buzz of the queue. The guitar strummers; the woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty; the Obama poodles. They were strangers but together, drawn there by history. They wanted, at some future time, to say they were in Grant Park the night the American face changed.

There was a confidence about the crowds. They relaxed, played cards, joked. They believed they were the new American majority.

When the police lines opened for them, they ran towards the stage. The first to get there whooped and cheered. Behind them would come tens of thousands of others.

Facing them were the stage and banks of TV cameras. Occasionally, the arm of a camera would sweep across them and they would cheer and wave. It was like being at a rock festival. Their image would appear on a screen in front of them and they would cheer some more. The sound-operator who tested the microphone with the
words "Barack Obama" heard the full roar of this Chicago night.

Four years ago in Boston, there was music and entertainment and desolation. The bands played on in the rain while John Kerry's aides drifted away into the night. In Chicago there was no music. Obama was the only draw.

The crowds enjoyed the early projection that Pennsylvania had gone for Obama. They roared for Ohio too. With Virginia, they knew they had it. And then, at 10pm local time, words appeared on the screen: "Barack Obama. President-elect."

The whole crowd was bouncing, embracing, slapping hands with neighbours and crying. They were caught up in something bigger than themselves, a cause. This was not about one man. It went deeper than that. It was about the world they lived in.

"It means all races and creeds" can live together, shouted one man. Another woman said it meant anyone, whatever their background, could make it. "Sublime," whispered one woman, half in tears. She went on to say she hoped George W Bush would not do more damage before he left office.

They listened, mainly quietly, to John McCain's speech of concession. Some clapped him respectfully and waved American flags. Here was a different McCain to the last weeks of the campaign; generous and concerned with honour, with doing the right thing. Only when Senator McCain praised Sarah Palin was there a murmur. But the concession speech was only a passing distraction. McCain no longer mattered to them.

Then a voice announced: "The first family of the United States." The new face of America emerged into 10,000 flashes. To see the Obamas there was to understand that, after a day of polling, a nation had been rebranded. Michelle and the two girls wore new outfits. They looked like special occasion clothes. I wondered when they had dared buy them. Sasha and Malia skipped on to stage. They remain wonderfully untouched by all the attention. Whether they understand it or not, they are an important part of America's image to a watching world.

To the left of the stage was a pen. Spike Lee was there. Oprah and Jesse Jackson in tears. Director, talk show host, preacher; they had all broken through. They had pushed back the boundaries but this day was different. It took an Obama to smash the glass ceiling.

Towards the front of the pen was Obama's inner circle. David Plouffe, campaign manager, David Axelrod, chief strategist, and Robert Gibbs, the communications director. They embraced friends and checked their Blackberries, an almost nervous tic from the campaign. The success partly belonged to them. They had fought a remarkably harmonious campaign. They had sacrificed nearly two years of their lives. I thought they might talk through Obama's speech but they listened carefully. Axelrod clapped enthusiastically. To the last, he is a passionate believer in the message of change.

This was not an election night speech by Obama. It was crafted. It could have done for the inauguration. It was not knocked up overnight. Like everything about the campaign, it was planned carefully. It was a speech of big dreams and high hopes. There were conscious traces of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King in it. Obama is not coy about following in their steps. He addressed the world - friend or foe alike. "To those who would tear the world down - we will defeat you," he said. To study his face when he said it, you could not mistake his toughness.

He spoke about civil rights through the experience of a 106-year-old woman. "She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people 'We Shall Overcome'." The settling of history matters for all the African-Americans who turned out for him, but Barack Obama does not want to be seen as a black president.

I watched him closely as the crowd rode every word with him. Afterwards, he stood alone between two bullet-proof screens. For a second, he seemed isolated and one could glimpse the loneliness of power and the burden of expectations that cannot possibly be fulfilled. It may not get any sweeter than this moment. His honeymoon will be short. The economy may splutter and the power of his words may fail.

In 1989, I was fortunate to have a front-row seat at another history day; the fall of the Berlin Wall. In that long night in East Berlin, I thought my known world as defined by the Cold War was ending. At Checkpoint Charlie, the hat of an East German border guard was removed and placed on a dancing bear and before my eyes Soviet authority slipped away. Russia is resurgent but those nations once locked behind the Iron Curtain are now part of the European home.

Looking out at Grant Park last night, I wondered whether this was another such night. America has voted for an African-American. Only a few years ago, I would have doubted it happening. Racism will not disappear but America recognised in this election that it is a rainbow nation and increasingly so. Diversity is its future. The younger generation does not fear it. I went to a Republican rally in Wilmington, Ohio. Every face was white. The party will have to broaden its appeal to stay competitive in the future.

The world is already saluting Barack Obama. The love affair won't last but, for a while, America will regain its lure. The strength and vibrancy of its democracy will be admired. To throw up a candidate like Barack Obama is testimony to the success of the American system. But will it be a history day? It could be but, in any case, to be there on that night was a privilege.

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Excitement in Chicago

• Gavin Hewitt
• 5 Nov 08, 03:46 AM GMT

The mood in the crowd here at Grant Park is that the election is won. They believe that the projected wins for Obama in Pennsylvania and Ohio have clinched it.

I've just spoken to senior Obama adviser Linda Douglass. She says that the path to the White House for John McCain is now very difficult. She said that yesterday Barack Obama told his closest circle that they had done everything in their power to win.

Even so, it may be some time before we see Barack Obama. He won't appear before polls have closed on the West Coast. Otherwise it disenfranchises Californians.

Confirmation again tonight that the deciding factor was the economy. So many Americans reached the conclusion that the country was on the wrong track and Barack Obama was the candidate of change.

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The end game?

• Gavin Hewitt
• 5 Nov 08, 02:41 AM GMT

Suddenly Ohio may be the end game. Having lost there and in Pennsylvania, McCain's path to the White House is all but closed.

The crowd here knows it and are waiting to give the biggest cheer of the night.

One observation about Pennsylvania. When we were there we were told again and again that the white working class would not vote for him. There were warnings that race would play a part. Doesn't seem to have happened.

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Celebratory mood in Chicago

• Gavin Hewitt
• 5 Nov 08, 02:04 AM GMT

Signs are that 10% of voters made their minds up in past week. That might help John McCain.

But for over 60% the economy was their dominant concern and that must have helped John McCain.

Another straw in the wind. 69% of voters say McCain unfairly attacked Obama.

What Obama's aides are focusing on is turnout and they are encouraged about what they are hearing.

The mood in Chicago edges towards celebration. A huge cheer a few moments ago that the Democrats appear to have won a vital Senate seat in North Carolina.

I've just spoken to Rev Jesse Jackson. He echoes what people have been saying so often in the past few days. There are many people living who remember black voters being attacked. He believes America is a changed country.

A huge cheer for the projection that Obama has won Michigan. No real surprise. The McCain campaign effectively abandoned the state several weeks ago.

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The clock counts down

• Gavin Hewitt
• 4 Nov 08, 07:58 PM GMT

Chicago, Illinois:The Obama team let their emotions show at the last campaign stop in Virginia last night. When Barack Obama came on stage he seemed taken aback by the size of the crowd.

"Goodness gracious," he said. "wow." As he moved towards the Virginia governor and
the would-be senator who had introduced him, he wanted to dance up the final two steps but the energy deserted him.

The candidate himself could not quite believe that 100,000 people were standing in the Virginia night past eleven o'clock.

Before his speech finished I spoke to Robert Gibbs, his Director of Communications and one of the three aides closest to Obama..The mood was high. They think they have done enough.

"It was up to the people now," he told me. "There were days," he said, "when the mountains seemed too steep." But he was confident although "full of anxieties".

The anxieties were that people would not turn out in the numbers necessary; that some of John McCain's attacks had left their mark. And then there is the nagging concern about race, that on voting day some people might resist voting for a black president.

These are all unknowns and they make the front-runner's team nervous. David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist, would only say he was "cautious".

We sensed the lightness of mood when Barack Obama voted today. Afterwards at the airport on his way to Indiana he said he noticed that his wife Michelle had spent some time in the voting booth as if making up her mind who to chose.

Having spent some time visiting his campaign workers in Indiana Barack Obama is going to throw some hoops, play some basketball. It's an election night tradition with him. After that he will have dinner with his family then he's going to travel to the Hyatt hotel in Chicago to watch the results come in with his closest aides.

Only after the polls close will he travel to Grant Park to make a statement.

Chicago is bathed in sunshine. The temperature is in the seventies. The city is one the edge of excitement. Some businesses are closing early. 70,000 tickets have been issued for the main event but thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, will drift to the lakeside park to be there at what they hope will be a moment of history.

Barack Obama will speak between two large bullet-proof screens. It will either be a concession that would be unbearable to his supporters or it will be an acceptance that his message of change has persuaded the voters.

In that event America will be a changed country, offering a very different face to the world.

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What victory would mean

• Gavin Hewitt
• 4 Nov 08, 04:17 AM GMT

Jacksonville, Florida, and Manassas, Virginia: In Jacksonville, Florida, today the crowd had not come to listen to a speech. They had come to cheer, to celebrate. This was more like a homecoming, a ticker-tape moment.

So when Barack Obama started to speak, he was interrupted frequently. They chanted his name.

At the edge of the crowd, I started talking to African-Americans. They all believe that Obama will be the next president. There are few doubters in the crowds. There was a 72-year-old who remembered when dogs were turned on black voters. "This is such a big step," he said. "As big as when Jackie Robinson, the black baseball player, made it through."

Another man said it "would change the face of America". For him, it would be the moment when the American dream had meaning. He said it would mean that any person, whatever their colour or belief, could make it to the top.

I asked several people how they would react at the moment they knew that the next president of the United States was a black man. One woman said to me with a smile: "Cry. I will cry. Cry for joy and cry for all that has passed."

The 72-year-old said he would cry too. Tomorrow night, if victory goes to Obama, there will be a lot of tears and a lot of memories, some painful.

I came away from these conversations struck again as to how momentous this night could be. I met people who remember benches with the words "whites only" on them. Others talked about sit-ins at lunch counters. Others talked about the "Freedom Rides". All of this is within living memory.

There will be millions of African-Americans tomorrow who will recall the long struggle that has brought them to this point.

I was in Chicago about 10 years ago. I made a programme called "American Apartheid". It coincided with the Million Man March, when hundreds of thousands of African-Americans marched in Washington.

I remember the hopelessness of the Robert Taylor Homes on Chicago's South Side. I recall hearing the preacher Louis Farrakhan talk of "white devils", and the crowd was with him.

How times have changed and how Barack Obama has changed the times. The gangs had no role models and saw no means of escaping their neighbourhood. Obama, from the outset, did not want to define himself as a black candidate. Part of his appeal was that he said there was no black or white or Hispanic, only Americans.

The past two times that I have heard Michelle Obama, she has told a story. She talks of meeting an 80-year-old on the rope line who says to her: "I never thought I would live to see the day." On neither occasion does she finish the thought. She does not have to. Everyone listening knows that the man was saying that he never thought he'd live to see a black man living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So, a victory for Obama on Tuesday evening would lead to huge celebrations - but to reflection, too, on the struggle that brought Americans to the point that they would vote for an African-American.

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The Cleansing

• Gavin Hewitt
• 3 Nov 08, 04:45 AM GMT

Columbus, Ohio: At Barack Obama's rally in Columbus on Sunday he asked how many people had voted early. Hands shot up. In my estimation 70% of the crowd had already been to the polling stations. They were there not to be persuaded or convinced. They were there to celebrate their man.

This was party time. There were Obama hats, T-shirts, buttons and badges. I noticed some holding up small green-edged photos of Obama. When the music played they swayed. When the pastor finished his invocation they belted out "Amen". I detected no tension, no anxiety about the result.

In the speeches before Barack Obama arrived I realised that this was not just a celebration about the future but an exorcising of the past. The Mayor of the city said: "By defeating John McCain we are defeating George W Bush. We are ridding our country of the policies of George W Bush." It felt like a casting out. Then the Ohio Governor, Ted Strickland, took the microphone. "In a few hours," he said, "we will bring to an end the economic nightmare known as the Bush-Cheney regime."

At the mere mention of the president's name the crowd booed. I cannot remember a time when a president was so openly despised. But it was the word "regime" that caught my attention. It was as if the Bush presidency was somehow illegitimate.

For some people the election is a cleansing.

Another snapshot from today was Michelle Obama. She introduced her husband as she had done in Miami 10 days ago. She dresses down. She does not wear the suits of a political wife. She dresses casually and wears little make-up. She is her husband's greatest fan.

In Miami she said: "I'd like to give all the credit to my husband for all that is going on because I love him so much and I think he's phenomenal." She said these words with such intensity that the crowd immediately cheered. Later on she told a story about what she said to him when he first announced: "I said babe - you can get us 75% of the way there, maybe 80%..." It was the first time I had heard a politician's wife use the "babe" word. It came across as easy and natural. In Columbus she enthused: "Barack is ready, so ready to be President of the United States." If Barack Obama wins the First Family will be part of the change that the candidate has promised.

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Frayed Nerves and Rumours

• Gavin Hewitt
• 2 Nov 08, 02:25 AM GMT

Highland, Indiana and Columbus, Ohio: It is that time in an election campaign when truth is most elusive. Much is read into small events and rumours travel fast. And spin is everywhere. Even the pumpkins have been carved into political slogans. All the insiders are nervous. The confident briefers are on edge.

Last night we were waiting in Highland, Indiana, for Obama. It was Halloween night
And I expected the crowd to be slim but it wasn't. We were on what is called the "riser", an elevated platform for camera positions. Places on the riser are hotly contested.
The Obama motorcade was late. Unlike most occasions Barack Obama had with him a small pool of reporters and cameramen.

Shortly after the senator arrived, but before he appeared on stage, one of the pool cameramen set up beside me. He could not quite believe what he had seen. After months of following Obama he had seen a flash of temper. The senator, wearing dark glasses for Halloween, had been walking one of his daughters down the street in Chicago when he was ambushed by a camera crew who were not part of the pool. Obama thought an agreement to take pictures from a distance had been broken and he was angry and let fly.

A moment and nothing more. But in the hours of frayed nerves everyone was discussing it. Within minutes it was running on the internet. Some said it revealed one of the truths of the campaign that Obama does not like the unexpected. He is very controlled himself and runs his campaign tightly. Others thought he was living now on the dangerous edge, weary, drained of energy and wanting it to be over.

So it was debated and discussed. The consensus was that most voters would sympathise with a candidate wanting a little time with his daughter. My hunch was that most people would side with the senator and not with the media.

At moments like that you think of the cost of seeking high office. The most natural things are denied to you. Not just now but maybe always if you are successful. The lenses are always present, probing and unforgiving.

Then this morning there was the issue of an Obama relative who was found to be living illegally in Boston. Was this a November surprise? Would this embarrass the candidate? Everyone waited, watching to see if a story catches fire. Very quickly Obama's Chicago office said that the candidate didn't know his relative was there and that the law must take its course. But then I heard someone suggesting that it might underline the idea of "the other" that Obama was an outsider.

It is that time in an election when volunteers are working hard, calls are being made and all commentators can do is speculate.

And into the vacuum march the spinmeisters. The McCain team is saying that the greatest fight back in political history is under way. The Obama camp are so confident they think they might even clinch Arizona - McCain's home state. McCain's people believe 10% of voters are undecided and that most of them are breaking for their candidate. The Obama advisers say the number of undecided voters is much less - perhaps 2% and that they are dividing fairly equally in their loyalties. Both cannot be right but both are wanting to claim the big Mo - momentum.

Then, at this hour of high anxiety, people turn on the pollsters. Remember their
record, McCain supporters tell me. They were wrong about John Kerry (not all were) and what about the New Hampshire primary? Those of us who were in the UK at the time went to bed with assurances ringing in our ears of a Kerry victory only to wake to an entirely different story.

So at this late hour McCain supporters are saying "don't believe the polls". They're flakes. And less educated white voters don't apparently respond well to pollsters. I even read, while on a plane to Ohio today, that some evangelical radio stations are asking God to help voters ignore the polls.

Then there are the young voters who flocked to Obama's camp. The word is that they're sitting on their hands or transfixed by Jon Stewart's Daily Show, where most of them, so it is said, get their news. The word is that it's the under-35s who have been the most reluctant to vote early.

So what does it all mean? That this is the time of anxiety where events and statements should be treated with most caution.

What I can attest to, however, is enthusiasm. The kind of enthusiasm that keeps you standing in a queue at a polling station in Franklin county in Ohio today for five hours. The enthusiasm that persuades you to bring your children with you on a beautiful autumn day to the polling station, knowing they will be bored. The enthusiasm that means that Franklin County thought there would be 12,000 early voters and 41,000 have shown up so far. That tells you something - that the greatest political show on the planet has engaged millions of Americans.

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